"The Gremlins In My Car"
by:
Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD
My car has been with me for over 2 decades and it has an engine that never quits. It has been fixed so many times and have survived so many things. Lately I have been hearing sounds from it. I attribute this to it's advancing age.
It bothers me that I feel that the car has been playing tricks on me as of late.
One rainy Night I drove to work and with the rains threatening to pour once again I was able to park without a hitch. I was bothered that the window on the driver side did not close properly. It left a gap that might let in water. And so I pressed on the Power window button. The glass went all the way down and as I was trying to push the button to get it back up....it died. The thing would not go up and the motor could be heard but nothing was happening. It started to drizzle lightly.
I had to go and see if I can use pliers to pull up the window. I had none. I was able to talk to one of the Shuttle drivers . named Chrismon to help me. I initially asked if he had a pair of pliers I could borrow but he went over and bought tools to help.
2 guards named Balgos and Carmelo also came buy to help if they can lift the window. We dismantled my driver side door. The whole thing( power window) was still unresponsive. It took us a good 30 minutes to declare that I will just have to cover it up as I was taking way too much time of these 3 total strangers who had no obligation to help me at all. Balgos gave me a piece of plastic to cover my open window and Chrismon refused to accept that money I was giving him as compensation for wasting his time. So I gave it to the 2 guards for their "Merienda".
The rain poured and I had to constantly check on the car "Plastic" window every 2 hours so that it would not collapse and not get the seats wet. On one such occasion I noticed that the passenger side window was also slightly open. So I started the car and out of sheer confusion pressed the button to lift the Driver side window...which it did! It closed! The hell? It was dead a couple of hours ago. And now it was working like nothing happened? Needless to say I still brought it to the shop to have it check where it performed perfectly. Even the window on the passenger side that was usually slow in lifting was working like it never had any problems.
The mechanic just wanted me to observe it for now. I believe the car was like a patient who never wanted to show any symptoms because it does not want to get admitted to a hospital. Sigh. I feel like the Gremlins in my Car are playing their nasty tricks on me again.
